A review of Ducks, Newburyport, by Lucy Ellmann
At 1,000 pages, the Booker shortlisted novel Ducks, Newburyport is an intimidating undertaking. Not least because much of the book is written in one long, stream of consciousness sentence.
It follows the musings of a housewife from rural Ohio, as she worries about her family, her life and the state of modern day America, from Trump to gun crime and Flint, Michigan.
While there isn’t a narrative as such for much of the book, it takes on an intriguing, repetitive structure, packed with anecdotes from the narrator’s life, as well as stories that she has seen in the news, such as school shootings or the deaths of innocent people shot by the police. Taken together, this is a powerful piece of political writing, told through the lens of domestic life.
And for such a critically acclaimed book, Ducks, Newburyport is surprisingly readable. Once you are familiar with the rhythm of the writing, it becomes immersive. The reader is sucked into the narrator’s increasingly anxious musings, swept from one fleeting thought to another as she wonders and plays with words.
This is the real achievement of the book: how Ellmann kept track of these seemingly random strands of thought is amazing. But they aren’t random. Words and thoughts recur at intervals, adding layers of meaning to the prose. And by the end, a narrative has taken shape without the reader even realising, until it reaches a climax.
Running alongside this stream of consciousness is the story of a mountain lion and her cubs. The relationship between mother and child adds to the main narrative, both from an emotional and physical perspective.
This isn’t an easy read – it took me two months to finish the book. But it’s a book I’ll think about for a long time, for its intelligent depiction of the intersection between private and public life and the numerous negative influences on modern society.
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